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While many were left scrambling to maintain operations in 2020 , plans and budgets are now being prioritized as the top data center challenges and priorities become clear .
• Demand for digital services explodes . The pandemic drove all interaction with the outside world online , causing a dramatic spike in the utilization of server compute , storage and network resources . Google ’ s Hangouts Meet platform saw its daily usage reach 25 times more than typical levels , Verizon reported that online gaming traffic surged by 75 % in one week , Zoom saw a 2,000 % increase in daily meeting participants and Akamai saw a 50 % increase in Internet traffic . Given COVID-19 ’ s impact on data centers , operators must find ways to quickly add capacity without experiencing downtime .
• Work from home and minimal on-site staff . Social distancing and restrictions on the number of personnel that can be on-site at any time are now commonplace . Uptime Institute reported that 85 % of data centers increased remote working and 77 % reduced on-site personnel . These changes are here to stay , with 77 % of data centers planning to continue remote work for years to come . With physical access to the data centers extremely limited , data center managers are increasingly leveraging intelligent infrastructure and remote management tools to oversee their data centers from anywhere .
• More complex infrastructure and more distributed sites . While on-premises data centers still support the majority of workloads , that piece of the pie is shrinking . Alternative workload deployments look more attractive to organizations that seek flexibility , cost-effectiveness and increased efficiencies . A total of 70 % of data center professionals reported to Service Express that Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity are the leading drivers of moving workloads off-premises . Organizations seek to mitigate risk from potentially uncertain global environments and to maintain operations in the face of vulnerabilities caused by COVID-19 . Other motivating factors for migrations include lower capital costs , improved security , rapid capacity expansion and infrastructure consolidation . The distributed nature of modern data center and Edge environments means operators must manage the assets , connections , power and environment across many locations without the ability to go on-site .
• Large need for remote planning and collaboration tools . Improving internal processes and collaboration is one of the top priorities for data center managers in 2021 . Since data center professionals are unable to go on-site , whether it ’ s because of COVID-19-driven restrictions or because the infrastructure is remote , there is a need for clear and concise visual instructions for smart hands . Work activity must be done accurately the first time to reduce the time spent in these sites , reduce the number of visits and mitigate a leading cause of downtime : human error . To improve productivity and efficiency , remote data center teams must break down organizational domains and share a single source of truth via common views of remote data center management dashboards and reports that are updated and visible in real-time .
• Increased focus on reducing costs and increasing efficiency . Total data center spending decreased in 2020 as economic uncertainty resulted in organizations pausing expansion plans and tightening budgets . While spending in 2021 is increasing , Service Express found that nearly half of all organizations ’ top priority for the next 12 months is to reduce IT costs and improve efficiencies . For many , this is not an easy task , with nearly threequarters of respondents reporting that their top challenge relates to budget and cost reductions . Consolidating data center footprints and moving from an on-premises to a hybrid cloud model are the leading initiatives organizations will take to save money . Tools that enable accurate and agile capacity planning of all space , power , cooling and connection resources will be increasingly leveraged to improve the efficiency of capacity utilization .
• Security remains important . Strengthening security and privacy is the number one priority for
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